State Health and Welfare services will still be offered in Bellevue to certain people, even though the county's Main Street office will be closing May 11 due to statewide department budget cuts.
Brenda Grupe, field services program manager for Idaho Health and Welfare, said during a meeting Monday at the Community Campus in Hailey that a replacement Health and Welfare office will be opened within the South Central Public Health District office at 117 E. Ash St. in Bellevue.
The Health District is a different entity from Health and Welfare. The health district provides immunizations—such as those for H1N1 last winter—and family planning services, while Health and Welfare's Bellevue office offered mental-health and child-welfare services. The health district will not be affected by Health and Welfare's budget cuts.
Grupe said the makeshift Health and Welfare office will likely be open one day a week for mental-health services and twice a week for children-welfare services, but the same number of people can't be served.
"We're still looking to providing services," she told the more than 60 people who attended Monday's meeting. "Of course, we need to look at the budget all the time."
Grupe said only those patients needing to be seen often—once a week—will be permitted to visit the Bellevue welfare office. The others will need to travel to the closest office in Twin Falls for appointments. Of the office's 80 or so clients, Grupe said, 15 to 20 are considered once-a-weekers.
"We have to take this as we go," said Lee Wilson, children's mental health chief. "Who knows what it will be like."
The reason Blaine County's office was singled out can be attributed to supply and demand. Grupe said Twin Falls creates 90 percent of the department's demands in Region 5, and Blaine County only amounts to 0.4 percent.
"We need the resources there," she said.
Eight other state welfare offices will also close between May 11 and May 25, including the two closest offices to the south in Jerome and Rupert.
"The bottom line is we don't have the money in the budget. It's our reality," Grupe said.
Of the closing offices' 87 workers, 21 will be laid off. The rest will be reassigned, including only one of Bellevue's four workers. Grupe said the nine offices were picked after evaluating client traffic, the ability to deliver services from another location and potential savings.
Besides these offices, an additional 105 positions will be cut from other state offices, including 35 workers from administrative offices in Boise and 73 others working in regional offices.
Total savings are estimated at $7 million annually.
Even though Health and Welfare will maintain a presence in Blaine County, many questions remained unanswered Monday. John Hathaway, regional director for eastern Idaho, didn't pretend to have all the answers. He said the transition is still being planned and encouraged the community to come up with creative solutions.
"Local solutions are better than what someone dreams up in Boise," Hathaway said.
He mentioned the possibility of still having appointments without much staff here, by using live-time Internet video to connect to a physician in Twin Falls, or wherever.
"We could do face-to-face, essentially," he said.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter of the Wood River Valley organized Monday's meeting.
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
